


Reincarnation

by Deshah



Category: Batman - All Media Types, Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: 'inspired by' is for chapter 3, Gen, Reincarnation, Short Chapters, because that's not creepy at all, fanfanfic, frost-formed flame-forged, mostly - Freeform, various people reincarnated into various other people's bodies
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-25
Updated: 2018-11-01
Packaged: 2019-03-09 08:54:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13478007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deshah/pseuds/Deshah
Summary: In which I take various characters from various fandoms and reincarnate them into various Harry Potter characters, mostly Harry himself. Some of these will be continued; some will not.First: Jason Todd -> Harry PotterSecond: IPREThird: Frost-Formed, Flame-Forged!Tim Drake





	1. Jason to Harry

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Frost-formed, Flame-Forged](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1984572) by [heartslogos](https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartslogos/pseuds/heartslogos). 



> This one will probably be ongoing, just... don't hold your breath.
> 
> Someday I will learn how to format footnotes. Today is not that day.

When Vernon and Petunia Dursley were unable to find a sitter for their eight year old nephew while they took their son on a day trip to London, Jason Todd seized his chance. London wasn't Gotham (nowhere was Gotham) but the streets were the streets, and he knew how to live on them.

 

Some three years later…

The Robins, a group of homeless kids and teens who were less “gang” and more “family”, were incredibly startled when a large brown owl swooped into their main safehouse one morning and dropped a letter, of all things, on their leader's head. Well, where his head would have been if he'd still been there when it landed. 

Crystal, thirteen and untrusting and Jason's best student in projectiles, threw her pen through the air like a dart, hitting the bird at least hard enough to concuss it. They all watched it fall, wary and suspicious. Lulu, whose proficiency in explosives was terrifying for anyone, let alone a ten year old¹, darted forward to check it over. Trusting her, Jason turned his attention to the letter. He'd thought there weren't any themed… anyone, villains or heroes or otherwise, in this world, but maybe he'd been wrong…?

 _Mr. H. Potter,_ read the letter, and underneath that his precise location, down to the room where they all sleep. His eyes narrowed. How the fuck did someone manage to connect that name to him? And _how do they know where he lives?_ More importantly, how much do they know about his family? 

Jason uses his knife to flip over the envelope and examine the seal (an _actual wax seal,_ what the fuck) holding it shut. A coat of arms divided into fourths and centered on an _H,_ each quadrant dedicated to an animal -- a snake and a bird on the right and two noticeably different but otherwise unidentifiable four-legged creatures on the left. Underneath is a legend, rendered illegible by size.

What the fuck.

 

The next day, another owl pecked at the closed window of their new main safe house. TK, who was closest, peeked past the curtain and swore. Loudly. Lulu leaned on her brother’s shoulder to look out as Jason, the only other person currently in the safe house, jerked abruptly into wakefulness. 

“How the fuck?” she breathed. Jason rolled upright and made his way over, silent but quick. The bird pecked at the window again, with a distinct air of impatience. One beady eye fixed itself on the twins. TK dropped the curtain. 

Upon seeing the owl, Jason swore as well. Then he shooed the other two away from the window, murmuring to them “don’t kill it this time, okay?” Both twins pouted; they’d eaten owl the night before. It was a rare treat, since it wasn’t often they got fresh meat.

Jason opened the curtains and then the window, extending an arm to the bird. Testing a theory. It didn’t hesitate to land on his arm and stick its leg out expectantly. As he’d thought, then. (Who in their right mind would train owls as messenger birds?)

With his other hand, Jason took the envelope from the bird. It was identical to the first from the name on the front to the contents.

_”We await your owl…”_

With the twins' help, Jason fished out a sheet of notebook paper and penned his reply. 

_Deputy Headmistress McGonagall,..._

 

¹Jason wasn't the one who taught her that. Jason was not in the business of teaching small children to build bombs.


	2. IPRE to ...many people

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Something about the IPRE crew makes them reincarnate when they die for what _should_ have been the last time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Full disclosure: this was originally only going to be about Taako, but I talked to some people and they put _ideas_ in my head. 
> 
> There will _definitely_ be more of this.

Taako did not expect to die (finally, permanently) of old age. He was right.

The less said about that, the better.

In any case, he died (relatively) young, and expected that that would be the end of things. Kravitz would come to reap him, and he would hang in the afterlife with his hot boyfriend and wait for his family to join him. Instead, he woke up moments later with a searing pain in his forehead and an alarming weakness in his limbs -- made even more alarming by the malevolent magic radiating off the thick, writhing mist in front of him. It rushed at him, and he tried to cast magic missile, but it was like he couldn't reach his magic -- it was getting closer -- he cast again, focus, focus -- a bright white light burst out of him and barrelled into the thing and it reared back, roiling in on itself and turning tail to vanish out the hole where a wall had probably been. 

\--

Taako was fuming. He had realized partway through the trip with the giant man that the man was, in fact, not a giant -- _he_ was just a baby. And sure, alright, he wasn't terribly happy about that, but hey, apparently reincarnation is a thing. Nothing wrong with that. Whatever went wrong with his and made him remember, he's grateful for it. So no, it wasn't that. It wasn't the incomprehensible language, either; who knew how much time had passed or where he'd been born? No, it was this: 

Taako had been left on a doorstep. In what was clearly the middle of fall. With only a blanket and a letter. As an infant. _What the actual fuck?!_

\--

Taako -- he didn't bother thinking of himself as Harry -- hit the end of the his patience at two years old. He stuck it out for practicality's sake until he was eight. 

\--

Magnus is excited! Today he's going to go to Hogwarts, which is a very silly but also entirely appropriate name for a wizard school. He'll meet all sorts of new people, which will be great, but not as great as potentially meeting _magic dogs._

\--

Taako looked up disinterestedly when the door to his compartment banged open and a head of messy red hair suck itself in, wearing a grin that reminded him uncomfortably of Magnus. 

“Hey!” The redhead cheered. “Almost empty compartment, heck yeah!” He bounced in like he belonged there, muscled his trunk up onto the rack with no apparent difficulty, and plopped down opposite Taako. He was still grinning. 

“Ron Weasley, nice to meet you!”

Taako considered using his newer name for a good two seconds. “Taako,” he drawled, and popped his gum. “You know, from T.V.?”

\--

When the woman calls “Potter, Harry!”, it takes him a moment to remember that that’s him. Grimacing, Taako saunters to the front of the room. He'll have to work on reacting to that name.

_What have we here?_ Taako wishes, abruptly, that he had a pearl on hand and could cast Identify. _Ah, young wizard -- or not so young, I see -- you will find that witches and wizards here have a different way of doing things than you are used to. But I assure you that my only function is to sort you._

_Will you tell anyone about my memories?_ Taako thinks back at it, already resigned.

_Certainly not. Now, shall we get on with your sorting?_ And, without giving him the opportunity to reply -- _Let's see. A good mind, certainly, but not a great one. Not Ravenclaw for you. Similarly, you are not even slightly Hufflepuff--_

_Thank you._

_...That was not a compliment. While I would not hesitate to call you brave, and for all that you cannot always be considered cunning, you are sly, deceitful, selfish, opportunistic, and your very own type of clever. I can see that you are most suited for_ SLYTHERIN!

And the Great Hall falls into absolute silence for about three seconds before breaking out into whispers. Someone at the table behind him falls over. 

Taako shrugs, gives back the hat, and strolls towards the table of students dressed in silver and green. He got lucky, he thinks absently as deafening cheers quite suddenly burst from the table in front of him; that color scheme will look stunning with his new complexion.

\--

Attending Hogwarts went a long way towards explaining what the fuck was up with his magic. Apparently, he'd been brute-forcing it into the shape he'd wanted. Official Spells were _much_ easier to cast. Then again, the wand probably helped.

\-- 

“MAGNUS!” Taako barely had time to jump before he's being glomped from behind. 

“[Hachi machi, Maggs, aren't you tired of that y-]”

_Thunk. “Magnus?!”_

They spin simultaneously to face the astonished female voice, and find -- something Grainer? Hermy? Hemmy? Something with an H, anyway. Her bag is on the ground in front of her, contents scattered underfoot.

_“Taako?!”_

...Come to think of it, from what little he actually noticed in class, she acted just like a younger Lucretia. And wore her hair the way Lucretia used to, too. And the handwriting on the half-finished homework spilling out of her bag was mighty familiar.

Well shit.

\--

McGonagall's first lesson involved a warning about the limits of transfiguration, including the fact that transfigured food is completely inedible. 

_...Oh._ So _that_ was why his transmuted food made him sick. Well then. He'd thought he'd just lost his touch.


	3. Frost-Formed, Flame-Forged

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I _adored_ Frost-Formed, Flame-Forged by heartslogos. I got their permission to write a spin-off about that Tim Drake, and here's the beginning of it!

Somehow, Tim dies of old age. By the time it happens he is calm and ready for it. His surviving blood is around him as he draws his last breath, Ra’s holding his hand and his eyes. The last thing he sees/feels/tastes is Ra’s’s seithr, jade-white-gold. It is good.

 

The next thing Tim knows is the sudden assault of light/cold/noise, and he is unable to keep himself from wailing. 

 

Tim's new parents are visibly western, and so is he. However they do not speak the western tongue as he knows it.

They repeat his new name often enough for him to catch on that he is Harry. Other words are harder, as aside from “mummy” and “daddy”, they are not making a concentrated effort to teach them to him. Rather, he is expected to pick them up from their constant chatter. And he does -- but slower than he wants to. Still, his parents seem to regard him as some sort of genius baby. He does try to appear normal -- Ymir knows he's spent enough time around his blood’s children to know how to act -- but deep cover work is not something he's trained for. He is only moderately successful. 

His new parents see very few people. There is Moony, who is tired and feels like a direwolf when he holds him, the contact being the only way this new body can sense seithr at all. There is Padfoot, who is loud and bright in all his senses. And there is Wormtail, whose seithr is tainted by something twisted and wrong. He cries when Wormtail holds him. 

Being a baby is the most boring possible experience. He pushes himself constantly to move, to learn, to understand. He meditates on his past life, on his experiences and his knowledge, so that he will never forget it. 

He misses his blood, his country, his people -- terribly. 

Still, he is well taken care of, loved and provided for. It is not like his first childhood, but it is a good one. 

Then the man comes.

Tim is jolted out of his nap when there is a splintering crack like a door being blown in. He stands up in his crib, listening to the indistinct shouting and beginning to maneuver to get out. Before he can, his new mother runs into the room, scooping him up and turning. (Her seithr tastes like panic.) She has made it only a step towards the door when another figure enters the room, tall and pale and red eyed. She backs away so quickly she stumbles, putting Tim back in his crib and shielding him with her body.

Tim grasps for his seithr as his mother begs for his life. He tries desperately to call it forward, to strike out at this man, but it remains as perceptible but out of reach as ever.

His mother falls. 

_“Avada Kadavra.”_

The man falls too.

 

The pain in his forehead makes him pass out, and the next thing he knows is a shrill shriek. 

 

The slow but steady return of his seithr is possibly the only thing keeping him sane.

There is tedium. There is the cupboard. There is the squalling child and the shrill woman and the angry man. He touches them only rarely, but he feels it when he does -- they have no seithr at all.

Then there is school, again, and he learns their language and their writing and their numbers, though there is little else that is new. The history, watered down as it clearly is. The first time he brings home a grade it is leagues better than Dudley’s, and he is screamed at and shaken, and locked in his cupboard without food. He makes sure to succeed after that. It is not as though he needs to use his seithr, still not quite fully accessible to him, to jimmy the lock.

 

Tim is eight, again, when he leaves. He is more than capable of taking care of himself. All he needs to do is get to a city -- London is ideal -- and find the underground. He can make his way from there.

Tim has absolutely no qualms about stealing from his… guardians. Food, money, valuables. They wake up one morning and he's gone. 

(Of course Tim pursues vendetta against the Dursleys. Theft is not enough. But murder is not in the cards; it would draw far too much attention. He does not have the resources to start a whisper campaign to discredit and ostracize them. He does not know about the existence of child protective services to report them. In the end, the route he goes is both simple and complex.

Curses are not something he's ever been fond of, but he knows how to craft them. It is simple enough to obtain a pen and write in seithr and ink, inscribing his intent on the underside of a loose floorboard. Just a touch of bad luck, accumulating every time one of them walks down the stairs. Quiet noises, thumping and sobs, coming intermittently from the cupboard. Just enough disruption to the wiring that the electricity will be unsteady, flickering lights and faulty appliances. Seeping cold in and around the cupboard no matter the weather or insulation. An invitation to pests; insects and rodents. 

It takes a little bit of fiddling, but he is able to link his working to the ward he feels whenever he touches the house. In doing so, he opens the way to shifting the ward’s target from himself to his closest genetic match. So long as Petunia Dursley calls this house home, it will be haunted. The ward isn't powerful -- no wonder, since it's tied to _love_ \-- but even as it is it is enough to power such a subtle working for several years. With Petunia’s love for her son and husband to charge it, well…

Tim feels it sink into the bones of the house. Even if the board is destroyed, while the house and the ward stand so too will his working. He has fulfilled his vendetta. Whoever set that ward does not know of his escape. The Dursleys will believe him dead.)

 

It’s coincidence that lets him find the pub. If he hadn’t happened to wander near enough to sense the overpowering seithr in the air -- enough that he doesn’t need to be touching anything to feel it -- it would have been years before he would know about it or about the insular magical community.

An illusion -- for all he once mocked southern magic he has been using a lot of it -- lets him enter unnoticed, and he takes a seat in the back and observes.

There are many people in the pub who don’t look quite human. Everyone is dressed in robes. The fires in the fireplaces along the wall occasionally turn green and spit out people. ...He’s going to have to learn a whole new way to using seithr again, isn’t he. Closer observation shows that these people use their seithr loudly, pointlessly; they do things that could be done just as easily with their hands. They wave sticks around as if they do not know how to form seithr without them.

A bald, toothless man comes to ask him for his order, and he asks for tea, only to be brought up short when told -- “That’ll be two sickles, if that’s all.”

He blinks up at that man. “I only have pounds.”

Understanding crosses the man’s face. “New to the area? You’ll be wanting to go through to Gringotts then. Entrance to the alley is through that door back there--” he points to a door near the bar “--It’s three bricks over, two up from the dumpster, just a tap with your wand will do it. From there the bank is straight through; biggest building there, you can’t miss it.”

Tim flashes a thankful smile and gets a friendly one in return. “Thank you very much, Mr…?”

A shake of the head and wave of the hand. “It’s just Tom, lad.”

“Tom, then. I’ll be back for that tea.”

Another toothless smile. “Of course.” Tom left to return to his other customers, and Tim took his leave.

Through the door turns out to be a small brick alleyway, and he pauses to illusion himself some robes before finding the correct brick -- half by touch -- and tapping it with one finger, charged with seithr. It’s solid -- not an illusion then. Tim takes a step back as the bricks fold away rapidly, and it is only his self-control that allows him to keep his composure at what lies beyond.

 

_Enter, stranger, but take heed_  
_Of what awaits the sin of greed_  
_For those who take, but do not earn_  
_Must pay dearly in their turn_  
_So if you seek beneath our floors_  
_A treasure that was never yours_  
_Thief, you have been warned, beware_  
_Of finding more than treasure there._

The strange creatures on either side of the door smile nastilly at him, and it reminds him so of his own attitude that he cannot help but smile back.

He has more than enough money, by this point, to justify opening an account under the name Timothy al Ghul.


End file.
